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Lorne Michaels discusses SNL, Jimmy, Seth, Late Night and more. Here is a bit about SNL:
Quote:
DEADLINE: You’re coming off a rebuilding season at SNL. How challenging was it?
MICHAELS: We lost four leading men at the end of last season, Fred and Bill and Andy and Jason, all of whom were very seasoned, very strong cast. We lost Kristin the year before. All have been here a long time, and you get used to how good people are. Losing the fifth leading man in Seth (in early February) was a hard thing, in the middle of a season, because there’s only one other time in the 39 years that we ever changed Update in the middle of a season, and that was Norm Macdonald to Colin Quinn. And that was more because a whole other set of reasons, but I think that that made it a much harder thing, in addition to having to focus on launching Jimmy and launching Seth. But SNL, we put a lot of pressure, a lot of new people. It was a hard season.
DEADLINE: Are you considering any casting changes heading into next season?
MICHAELS: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re still in the middle of rebuilding. So, there will be changes this year.
DEADLINE: You also faced questions about diversity last season. What do you think about the controversy and the outcome, adding Sasheer Zamata?
MICHAELS: We’d lost four men, so what we were thinking about was replacing men. We brought in three women the year before. I’m always looking for people I think have the best possible shot at succeeding, because when it doesn’t work, it’s really rough, both on them and on the show. So I was preoccupied mostly with men, and we only added one woman, and that’s because Noel [Wells] impressed everyone at the auditions in LA, and then came to the studio and did just as well. There were a lot of people that we brought in who did really well in Chicago or LA or other cities, and then when they get into the studio, they’re not ready. When we launched the season, it first happened on a website, an interview with Jay. And then it turned into a story, and I think at that moment I sort of looked at it and went, “Oh, right, this doesn’t feel right.” So, we just began to address it, which we did.
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